Obesity rate needs action

Our opinion: The growing problem of obesity demands a more dramatic approach, along the lines of how New York tackled tobacco.

Over the last decade, two stunning changes have occurred in New York: We don’t smoke in most public spaces, which is making us healthier, and we’ve gotten so fat that, for the first time, our children aren’t expected to live as long as we do.

The Times Union’s Scott Waldman, probing state Department of Health data concerning surging childhood obesity rates, reported earlier this month that anywhere from 23.7 percent to 50.9 percent of the students in Capital Region schools are overweight or obese.

Around the same time, The Associated Press, noting the 10th anniversary of the passage of the state’s Clear Indoor Air Act, stated: “Few measures in Albany changed life in New York more.” Smoking rates among adults dropped 29 percent from 2003 to 2010; they plunged 70 percent among middle school students and 54 percent among high school students from 2000 to 2010.

Clearly, we need an obesity intervention on the same scale as what we’ve done on smoking.

The state health department warns that obesity is soon to eclipse tobacco use as the leading preventable cause of death. It is calling for “strong action” to reverse the toll on our children’s lifespans.

Already, obesity costs New Yorkers more than $11.8 billion annually, with some $4.3 billion of the bill falling on taxpayer-funded Medicaid, according to state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who was asked in 2008 to audit school nutrition and physical education programs.

Mr. DiNapoli, who followed up on those audits late last year, suggested the Health Department is best poised to lead a conversation and agenda that dramatically changes state, local and school policies and funding choices.

Just compare what was spent on anti-smoking programs in 2011-12 — $40 million, according to Mr. DiNapoli — to what is being spent on obesity-related programs now: $18 million, according to the state health department.

Whether that pie should be sliced differently — anti-smoking activists warn the money to stem tobacco use is too low already — or new funds should be applied to both these public health threats, it’s clear that a conversation is necessary.

Already, the health department is seeking federal funds for a pilot program that would offer behavioral counseling to 5 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries who are obese. It’s a start.

In that project, we find a smart approach, and something telling for our schools: What good behaviors are we teaching our students when schools continue to offer nutritionally unsound snacks and beverages in their vending machines or, as Mr. DiNapoli found in his audits, when only a fraction of our students get the recommended amount of physical activity?

Many Americans can recall the early 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy re-energized the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, touching off dramatic shifts in public attitudes. At that time, fewer than 5 percent of children were considered overweight (a standard lower than obesity).

Now, as costs tick up and lifespans down, we have to ask why the state hasn’t yet engaged on this issue in the kind of broad debate and action that yielded such life-saving initiatives as those that helped us smoke less and use our seat belts more. It’s time we started thinking outside the candy wrapper and soda can.

We are in a public health crisis. Our children are at risk. Nothing less than a landscape-shifting, governor-on-down strategy will do.

Where do I start? Do we not have health classes in schools? Do we not have Physical Education? Answer – YES!!! The problem here is you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. Until people care enough about themselves to care for themselves, they will be obese.

Next, the people who get medicaid also get food stamps. Start by reducing food stamp allotments to those how are obese and on drugs. A simple weigh in and drug test should do the trick.

It’s funny you used the term “landscape-changing.” There is no doubt that fatty, sugary and starchy foods play a role, but the shape of our communities does as well.

Take Guilderland Central High School as an example. It is miles from the town’s major population centers. How many of the district’s high school students live within walking distance? Very few, I’m sure, and some that do have no sidewalks to walk on.

In 1969, 48% of school kids walked or biked to school. In 2009, it was 13%. In 1969, many of those kids that didn’t, probably walked or biked to friends’ houses, Little League practice, or other activities. Now, many of these trips are taken in parents’ cars.

Crime, including crime against children, has dropped significantly in the last two decades. The evening news would have you think otherwise, but remember, their business model relies on playing with your gut-level emotions to sell advertising. If it happens every day, it isn’t news.

The real threats to children walking or biking to school are poorly designed roads, poor drivers and poorly placed schools.

In addition to better food, we must literally change our landscape to make walking and biking safe, normal and pleasant once again.

Just as the anti-smoking campaign targeted Big Tobacco, so too must the anti-obesity campaign target the food industry and its programming of sugar into our diets. Obesity is a symptom of an industry that is being allowed to slowly kill our population. The cure would be stringent regulation–a nanny state for the food industry, if you will. Stop corn subsidies, regulate corn syrup/fructose, and levy hefty fines as penalties. The effort to guilt the obese is wrong-headed and just plain stupid.

“An essential freedom is the freedom to live your life the way you choose.”

Childhood obesity is at an all time high. The habits and patterns that cause obesity are being learned at a very young age, and largely because of parental negligence and/or indifference. You’re really going to suggest that small children who aren’t being properly trained in healthy eating habits are obese by choice? That they’e consciously exercising a freedom to live the way they choose?

I’ve seen some ignorant selfish posts from you before, but this one is stunning.

I disagree Ann. Corn products in the food supply is akin to poison. Poor people can often only afford food that is laden with this crap, not to mention the fact that often poorer neighborhoods lack large markets within walking distance. I get the choice piece but I also think that it is morally wrong to continue to allow Americans to be poisoned by these food products. It is also costing us billions of dollars if not trillions in health care costs. This is not about a nanny state it is about making the food supply in this country far more healthy AND affordable. I see nothing wrong with reigning in big agra-business the same way we did with tobacco.

The obesity so called epidemic is created and invented just like all these so called health epidemics any longer. The scientific process was gutted and destroyed in the latter 1980 and early 1990s!

You want epidemics that dont exist simply lower the standards for which you define the criteria to be and voila instant epidemic!

Diabetes:

Old Definition: Blood sugar > 140 mg/dl
People under old definition: 11.7 million
New Definition: Blood sugar > 126 mg/dl
People added under new definition: 1.7 million
Percent increase: 15%

The definition was changed in 1997 by the American Diabetes Association and WHO Expert Committee on the Diagnosis and Classification of Diabetes Mellitus.

Hypertension:

High blood pressure is reported as two numbers, systolic or peak pressure and diastolic pressure when heart is at rest) in mm Hg.

Old Definition: cutoff Blood Pressure > 160/100
People under old definition: 38.7 million
New Definition: Blood Pressure > 140/90
People added under new definition: 13.5 million
Percent Increase: 35%

The definition was changed in 1997 by U.S. Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.

Prehypertension, a new category created in 2003: blood pressure from 120/80 to 138/89 includes 45 million additional people! If one includes this category, we have a grand total of 97.2 million total numbers of hypertensives and prehypertensives (whatever that is).

High (Total) Cholesterol:

Old Definition: Cholesterol > 240 mg/dl total cholesterol
People under old definition: 49.5 million
New Definition: Cholesterol > 200 mg/dl total cholesterol
People added under new definition: 42.6 million
Percent increase: 86%

The definition was changed in 1998 by U.S. Air Force/Texas Coronary Atherosclerosis Prevention Study.

Overweight:

Body Mass Index (BMI) is defined as the ratio of weight (in kg) to height (in meters) squared and is an inexact measure of body fat, though it supposedly establishes cutoff points of normal weight, overweight, and obesity.

Old definition: BMI > 28 (men), BMI > 27 (women)
People under old definition: 70.6 million
New definition: BMI > 25
People added under new definition: 30.5 million
Percent Increase: 43%

The definition was changed in 1998 by U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

“The new definitions ultimately label 75 percent of the adult U.S. population as diseased,” conclude the two researchers.

An estimated 300 attendees a recent meeting of the American College of
Epidemiology voted approximately 2 to 1 to keep doing junk science!

Specifically, the attending epidemiologists voted against a motion
proposed in an Oxford-style debate that “risk factor” epidemiology is
placing the field of epidemiology at risk of losing its credibility.

Risk factor epidemiology focuses on specific cause-and-effect
relationships–like heavy coffee drinking increases heart attack risk. A
different approach to epidemiology might take a broader
perspective–placing heart attack risk in the context of more than just
one risk factor, including social factors.

Risk factor epidemiology is nothing more than a perpetual junk science machine.

But as NIEHS epidemiologist Marilyn Tseng said “It’s hard to be an
epidemiologist and vote that what most of us are doing is actually harmful
to epidemiology.”

But who really cares about what they’re doing to epidemiology. I thought
it was public health that mattered!

we have seen the “SELECTIVE” blindness disease that
Scientist have practiced over the past ten years. Seems the only color they
see is GREEN BACKS, it’s a very infectious disease that has spread through
the Scientific community with the same speed that any infectious disease
would spread. And has affected the T(thinking) Cells as well as sight.

Seems their eyes see only what their paid to see. To be honest, I feel
after the Agent Orange Ranch Hand Study, and the Slutz and Nutz Implant
Study, they have cast a dark shadow over their profession of being anything
other than traveling professional witnesses for corporate hire with a lack
of moral concern to their obligation of science and truth.

The true “Risk Factor” is a question of ; will they ever be able to earn
back the respect of their profession as an Oath to Science, instead of
corporate paid witnesses with selective vision?
Oh, if this seems way harsh, it’s nothing compared to the damage of peoples
lives that selective blindness has caused!

The rise of a pseudo-scientific links lobby

Every day there seems to be a new study making a link between food, chemicals or lifestyle and ill-health. None of them has any link with reality.

“5. The Committees commented that tobacco smoke was a highly complex chemical mixture and that the causative agents for smoke induced diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, effects on reproduction and on offspring) was unknown. The mechanisms by which tobacco induced adverse effects were not established. The best information related to tobacco smoke – induced lung cancer, but even in this instance a detailed mechanism was not available. The Committees therefore agreed that on the basis of current knowledge it would be very difficult to identify a toxicological testing strategy or a biomonitoring approach for use in volunteer studies with smokers where the end-points determined or biomarkers measured were predictive of the overall burden of tobacco-induced adverse disease.”

In other words … our first hand smoke theory is so lame we can’t even design a bogus lab experiment to prove it. In fact … we don’t even know how tobacco does all of the magical things we claim it does.

The greatest threat to the second hand theory is the weakness of the first hand theory.

“I’ve seen some ignorant selfish posts from you before, but this one is stunning.”

Oh RD, you are such a charmer!

Children do have a choice but not nearly as much as adults and they are bound by their parents. We have a lot of education out there now about childhood obesity and how to tackle it. Parents need to hmmm parent and do their research to find ways to encourage their kids to stay active and healthy.

I’m not obese or even remotely overweight. If I want to get one Krispy Kreme donut, I should be able to.

Well, if smoking cigarettes and being obese affects someone’s intelligence, maybe harleyrider should try cutting back on the smokes and losing some weight.

If cigarette smoke causes cancer, then inhaling it, whether directly or indirectly, will also affect your health, or am I too believe that your lungs act as some kind of filter? Just ask the late actor Christopher Reeve’s wife Dana what she thinks…oh wait…you can’t because she got lung cancer from second hand smoke and died…